WE DON'T DO REALITY, WE REMAKE IT:

Interventionism's Realistic Future (Robert D. Kaplan, November 22, 2006, Washington Post)

Hard-core foreign policy realists (the kind who say this country should rarely intervene again, anywhere) are hoping that in the wake of our comeuppance in Iraq things will be going their way. That is to say, U.S. foreign policy will be defined by an obdurate caution, coupled with a ruthless, almost mathematical application of balance-of-power principles. You'd think -- to hear some of them talk -- that we're about to emulate China, which seeks only energy sources and advantageous trade agreements and cares nothing at all for the moral improvement of regimes in such places as Zimbabwe, Burma and Uzbekistan.

This is nonsense. Our foreign policy is about to experience an adjustment, not a flip-flop. Neither political party will support anything else if it really wants to elect a president in 2008. Just look at the dismay in this country over our failure to intervene in Darfur, even given the burden we already carry in Iraq. To be sure, the recent evidence that our democratic system cannot be violently exported will temper our Wilsonian principles, but it will not bury them. Pure realism -- without a hint of optimism or idealism -- would immobilize our mass immigrant democracy, which has always seen itself as an agent of change.

Until every nation realizes the ideals of our Declaration, we'll remain what we've always been, the greatest source of destabilization in the world. Indeed, we'll intervene in at least two countries over the next two years and even Democrats -- the Realist party -- will approve the missions.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 22, 2006 11:07 AM